Thursday, November 10, 2005
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
Goooooooooooood Morning Vietnam!
Hi,
It's been a while since I last wrote from around the world. Kind of missed it. hope that you share the same feeling :-). This time I am writing from Hanoi, Vietnam. Anat and I arrived here last week and liked it from 1st sight.
Vietnam is a developing 3rd world country with kind people (though they make you feel like a living ATM...), but it is pretty hard to communicate with the locals as they berely speak a word of English (other than "yes, yes"), so body language is mostly in action as you can imagine...
3 million people in Hanoi, and about the same number of motorcycles drive in all directions, horne and don't care much for brake paddle nor traffic lights.
From Hanoi we took a night train to Sapha, a village up the northern mountains next to the Chinesse border. The scenery consists of rice fields (aka "pedi fields") in their harvest season, and lots fo water: falls, rivers and lakes. We hiked a bit and went to see the sunday market at Bacha which is rather coorfull and full with strange food: a soft drink made of fungos bird (pretty grous), a local wine made of cobra snake and scorpions juice (didnt have the balls to try), rice wine and more. The Vietnamise practicly eat eveything: from worms via snakes, bees, chicken egg fetus and even dogs. aside to that, there is a delicious rice/noodles based cousine with hot spices and soy sauce, lots of ginger, garlic and bamboo.
For the Jewish new years, we arranged a big dinner in our guest house (on a large porch with great view) with ~20 people, mosttly Israelis but also from Holland, China, Canada, France and UK, following the traditional blessings and food.
Happay new year
Hanan
It's been a while since I last wrote from around the world. Kind of missed it. hope that you share the same feeling :-). This time I am writing from Hanoi, Vietnam. Anat and I arrived here last week and liked it from 1st sight.
Vietnam is a developing 3rd world country with kind people (though they make you feel like a living ATM...), but it is pretty hard to communicate with the locals as they berely speak a word of English (other than "yes, yes"), so body language is mostly in action as you can imagine...
3 million people in Hanoi, and about the same number of motorcycles drive in all directions, horne and don't care much for brake paddle nor traffic lights.
From Hanoi we took a night train to Sapha, a village up the northern mountains next to the Chinesse border. The scenery consists of rice fields (aka "pedi fields") in their harvest season, and lots fo water: falls, rivers and lakes. We hiked a bit and went to see the sunday market at Bacha which is rather coorfull and full with strange food: a soft drink made of fungos bird (pretty grous), a local wine made of cobra snake and scorpions juice (didnt have the balls to try), rice wine and more. The Vietnamise practicly eat eveything: from worms via snakes, bees, chicken egg fetus and even dogs. aside to that, there is a delicious rice/noodles based cousine with hot spices and soy sauce, lots of ginger, garlic and bamboo.
For the Jewish new years, we arranged a big dinner in our guest house (on a large porch with great view) with ~20 people, mosttly Israelis but also from Holland, China, Canada, France and UK, following the traditional blessings and food.
Happay new year
Hanan
